The DepEd argues that the K-12 program will be the solution to yearly basic education woes and the deteriorating quality of education. Critics, however, counteract that the education crisis needs to be addressed more fundamentally and adding more school years would only exacerbate the situation.

Dissecting K-12

The K-12 model is an educational system for basic and secondary education patterned after the United States, Canada, and some parts of Australia. The current basic education system is also an archetype of American schooling but with a 10-year cycle.

DepEd reasons that it is high time to adopt a K-12 system, attributing the low achievement scores and poor quality of basic education to the present school setup. Following wide protests over the proposal, the department released its official position defending K-12.

Below are the main arguments and corresponding counter-arguments from critics.

1. The K-12 will solve the annual growing number of out-of-school youth. Students and parents, however complain that it would be an added burden to poor families.

While public education is free, a political youth group estimates that a student would still need an average of P20,000 per school year to cover transportation, food, school supplies and other schooling expenses.

Also, based on the latest Family Income and Expenditure Survey, families prioritize spending for food and other basic needs over their children’s school needs. Two more years for basic education would inevitably translate to higher dropout rate.

2. The K-12 will address low achievement scores and poor academic performance of elementary and high school students. DepEd says that the poor quality of basic education is reflected in the low achievement scores of students. Results of the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), however, negate the connection of the number of years to the performance of students.

According to results of the TIMSS, the length of schooling does not necessarily mean better scores. In fact, some countries with the same or shorter school cycle garnered the highest scores while those implementing the K-12 model or more years of schooling got lower scores.

The said study shows that fourth graders from Australia had respectable TIMSS scores despite having only one year of pre-schooling, while Morocco (two years of pre-school), Norway (three years) and Armenia and Slovenia (both four years) had lower scores than Australia. South Korea, which has the same length of basic education cycle as the Philippines, was among the top performers in the TIMSS, while those with longer pre-schooling (Ghana, Morocco, Botswana and Saudi Arabia, three years) had lower test scores.

In the high school level, Singapore that also has a four-year high school cycle, got the highest score. Ironically, the Philippines got a lower score together with countries that have longer high school cycles like South Africa, Chile, Palestine, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.

For the pre-college level, the Philippines also got a low score, but so did the United States, which has a 15-year basic and secondary education cycle. Students from Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong, all with shorter education cycles, got higher scores than America students.

3. The DepEd has enough resources to implement the K-12. Interestingly, countries whose students got high scores in the TIMSS were the ones whose governments allotted high public spending for education.

Despite nominal increases in the total education budget, the government has been spending less per capita on education. The real spending per capita per day dropped to P6.85 in 2009.

From 2001 to 2009, education’s portion in the national budget has steadily decreased. This pales in comparison to neighboring countries – Malaysia, 7.4 percent and Thailand, 4 percent. It is also lower than the four percent average for all countries that were included in the World Education Indicators in 2006. The country is also lagging behind its Asian counterparts in public expenditure on education as a percentage of total public spending.

However, according to Anakbayan spokesperson Charisse Banez, “Even if you combine the DepEd and SUCs (state college and universities) budgets, it will only equal to three percent of the GDP, a far cry from the six percent GDFP-amount advocated by the United Nations.”

The UN Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) recommend that governments spend at least six percent of their GDP for education.

Former Education secretary Mona Valisno stated in a separated study that DepEd needs at least P100 billion to fully address the shortage of 93,599 classrooms and 134,400 seats and P63 million for textbooks and scholarships.

Proponents of the program allude to the experience of St. Mary’s Sagada – a school implementing K-12 that has been topping the National Achievement Test in Mountain Province. However, aside from the K-12, the school also has a 1:20 teacher to student ratio and is not suffering any sort of shortage in faculty or facilities.

Critics of the K-12 assert that while government resources have been found wanting and insufficient for the present 10-year cycle, how will it be able to afford to fund a K-12 model?

4. The K-12 will open doors for more jobs for the youth, even without a college diploma.

DepEd says that a K-12 program will improve the chances for youth employment as it is aimed to improve technical-vocational skills through focusing on arts, aquaculture and agriculture, among others. The K-12, it further states, will ensure that students graduating at the age of 18 will have jobs, thus making them “employable” even without a college degree.

However, critics are quick to note that the Philippines, that has a predominantly young population, also has the highest overall unemployment rate in East Asia and the Pacific Region. According to World Bank study, the country also has the highest youth unemployment rate. Young Filipino workers are twice as likely to be unemployed than those in older age groups as they figure in the annual average of at least 300,000 new graduates that add up to the labor force.

The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reported in 2008 that 50 percent of the unemployed 2.7 million nationwide were aged 15 to 24. Of these, 461,000 or 35 percent had college degrees while about 700,000 unemployed youth either finished high school or at least reached undergraduate levels.

Therefore, the persistent high unemployment rates, may not be necessarily linked with the present 10-year cycle but instead with the country’s existing economic system and the government’s job generation policies.

5. Filipino graduates will be automatically recognized as “professionals” abroad. In the present 10-year cycle, the DepEd argues, the quality of education is reflected in the “inadequate preparation of high school graduates for the world of work or entrepreneurship or higher education.”

What the K-12 program aims to achieve, therefore, is to reinforce cheap semi-skilled labor for the global market. With young workers, mostly semi-skilled and unskilled workers now making up an estimated 10.7 percent of the total Filipino labor migrant population, it comes as no surprise then that the government is now programming its youth to servicing needs of the global market.

Labor migration, however, has resulted in the brain drain of Filipino skilled workers and professionals. Ironically, while the DepEd and the government mouths a so-called “professionalization” of the young labor force in foreign markets, their significance to domestic development and nation-building is sadly being undervalued at the expense of providing cheap labor under the guise of providing employment.

While proponents and advocates hail the K-12 model as the “saving grace” of youth unemployment, critics argue that it will only aggravate the country’s dependence on labor export and the inflow of remittances that do not necessarily contribute to substantive and sustainable nation-building.

A Filipino education

Lastly, the DepEd justifies the K-12 model by saying that the present short basic education program affects the human development of Filipino students.

Ultimately, regardless of whichever “model”, what the youth and country direly needs is for the development and establishment of an education system that caters to the needs of the Filipino youth and the society in general.

The crisis of the Philippine education system, in all levels, is stemmed not on the superficial, in this case the number of schooling years, but rather on the conditions and foundation on which it subsists. Unless the government addresses in earnest poor public spending, high costs of schooling, the predominance of a colonial curriculum, lack of transparency and accountability amid widespread corruption within the sector and the development of the country’s science and technology for domestic development, all efforts will remain on the surface.

Noemi Lardizabal-Dado is a social media practitioner with over 10 years experience in blogging, citizen advocacy and online media publishing. Otherwise known as @MomBlogger on social media, she believes in making a difference in the lives of her children by advocating social change for social good.

She is a co-founder and a member of the editorial board of Blog Watch . She is a resource speaker on good governance, transparency, parenting, women’s rights and wellness, cyber safety, social media and digital citizenship . She also blogs at her personal blogs : aboutmyrecovery.com (parenting) , pinoyfoodblog.com (recipes), techiegadgets.com (gadgets) and beautyoverfifty.net (lifestyle).

Disclosure:

Organization affiliation includes Scrap Pork Network. Family friends with House Representative Pia Cayetano and Senator Alan P. Cayetano. I did not vote for any presidential candidate in the 2016 elections.

K-12 program will respond to the need of developing the country’s competitiveness. It will also improve the quality of education we have here in the Philippines. Filipino graduates will be adequately prepared for the world of work or entrepreneurship.

tagomi

How will a country develop with a CORRUPT officials?:( First of all, they should improve the system of government before going to the quality or system of education because there are a lot of college graduates who are jobless. The best thing to do is to CLEAN the government. . . STOP CORRUPTION!

This is a waste time. Our edecations lies on the hands of each teachers and on our discipline..If they are gonna approve this then they should lower the tuition fees. But still this is a crap we would be wasting most of our lives studying the same lessons on each year. And plus alot of people are poor and they are less on money.. The Goverment are just doing this to have more money. And it would be best if the people will judge in this kind of matter.

What is happening in the Quality of Education here in the Philippines! K+12 is “ok” in terms of Junior High and Senior High! But I totally disagree with the AGE part wherein the child in Kindergarten 2 must be 5 years old? I am there that the child can read and all but its not just about the skills, there is also the Emotional Intelligence and Readiness in terms of the maturity of the child, not only that, there is also physical readiness for stress which is the general cause of all diseases such as CANCER, HIGH BLOOD even MENTAL ILLNESS! I am totally against it.

ITS NOT THE QUANTITY OF YEARS IN SCHOOL IT IS THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION IN SCHOOL!

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